The Viking Age was a vibrant and complex period of movement and change, not easily grasped inside a set of fixed notions and ideas. A new book presents 32 papers presented at the Nineteenth Viking Congress in 2022
Viking Connections. Proceedings of the Nineteenth Viking Congress
By Clare Downham, Fiona Edmonds, Nancy Edwards and David Griffiths
Liverpool University Press, 2026
ISBN:9781805967422 (Hardback),
eISBN:9781805967439 (PDF)
eISBN:9781805967477 (ePub)
ABSTRACT.
Viking Connections is an edited collection representing the most recent scholarship in the interdisciplinary study of the Viking Age. The 32 papers arise from the Nineteenth Viking Congress which took place in Wales and North-West England in July 2022. They focus on new research from across the Viking World encompassing Archaeology, History, Literature, Language, Place-names, Numismatics, and the History of Art. Themes include Irish Sea connections as well wider connections across the Viking World. There is also a Congress diary.
The title Viking Connections expresses the importance of international networks and long-distance patterns of contact, which underlie both the Viking Age itself and our contemporary community of interdisciplinary scholarship. Contributors include senior academics, early career researchers, and museum and heritage professionals.
The picture that emerges from this volume is of the Viking Age as a vibrant and complex period of movement and change. Highlights include James Graham-Campbell’s survey of the metallic wealth of the Isle of Man, Mark Redknap’s comprehensive account of Viking Age finds in Wales, Orri Vésteinsson’s investigation of the effects that the introduction of large amounts of silver had on Viking Age society, Elizabeth Pierce’s study that tracks the tenth- to twelfth-century Scandinavian presence in eastern Scotland whose evidence suggests substantial trading activity, Søren Sindbæk’s demonstration of how radiocarbon calibration curves, when applied to the fine-meshed stratigraphy of Ribe, suggest a new chronological framework for the beginning of the Viking Age, and Christian Cooijmans’ exploration of the idea of viking camps as not just military barracks, but sites where all aspects of everyday life went on, and which formed the basis of the whole viking phenomenon.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
- Paton’s foreword, Introduction and Congress Diary, Council, attendance and contributor lists, and Obituaries
- Máire Ní Mhaonaigh Kin, Allies, Frenemies: the Fragmentary Annals of Ireland and cross-cultural exchange
- Ben Guy Poetry and Taxes: Welsh responses to Viking attacks in the late tenth century
- John Hines Exploitation of the unfree: the impact of the Viking Age on Welsh society and economy
- Mark Redknap Vikings, Places, Silver and Contexts: a Welsh perspective
- Ryan Foster† Scandinavians in Cumberland: elite takeover, mass migration, or something else?
- Steve Dickinson The Viking Age shieling: craft, cues and contexts
- Caroline Paterson The Contribution of Recent Excavations of Furnished Burials to our Understanding of the Scandinavian Settlement of Cumbria
- Danica Ramsey-Brimberg Grave Circumstances: revisiting the influence of location on Viking Age burials in the Irish Sea area
- Erin McGuire Migrant Identities, Mortuary Citations, and New Ancestors in Western Scandinavian Scotland
- Dirk H. Steinforth Pagan Images for a Christian Message: tracing bi-cultural Viking-Age iconography in the Irish Sea region
- Maeve Sikora A Hoard of Vessels from Derreen, Co. Clare: its Irish and Scandinavian context
- Raghnall Ó Floinn† Late and Early Post Viking-Age Insular Ringed Pins (c. 900 – c. 1125): a reassessment
- Griffin Murray The Shrine of St Patrick’s Bell and the Origins of the Hiberno-Urnes Style
- Russell Ó Ríagáin The Viking Age in the Overkingdom of Ulaid
- Caitlin Ellis Um Írlandshaf: presentations of the Irish Sea in Old Norse-Icelandic
- Jane Kershaw and Stephen Merkel Viking Wealth in the Irish Sea Zone: new evidence from lead isotope analyses of Viking-Age rings and ingots
- James Graham-Campbell Wealth in the Isle of Man in the Early 10th Century
- Kristin Bornholdt Collins The 2021 Northern Mixed hoard (c. 1030/35), Isle of Man
- Johanne Porter A Saint from the East and a Hoard in the North: a reassessment of the St Edmund coins from the Cuerdale hoard
- Wendy Scott Copies and Crossing the Water: the implications of the unusual elements in the Lenborough Hoard for coin circulation in Anglo-Danish England.
- Fedir Androschchuk Viking-Age Silver Hoards in Norrland: find places, content and origin
- Jens Christian Moesgaard Who Controlled the Minting in Lund in the 11th Century?
- Orri Vésteinsson Silver and Social Change in the Viking Age
- Søren M. Sindbæk Ribe and the Beginning of the Viking Age
- Thorsten Lemm All Roads Lead to Hedeby: communication routes, local markets and mercantile interaction in the hinterland of a trading town
- Lene B. Frandsen Nybro: a road connection in south-west Jutland from the early Viking Age
Christian Cooijmans A Place of Contact and Contradiction: the socially constructed space(s) of viking encampment - Lesley Abrams Defining the Danelaw
- Elizabeth Pierce Identifying a Scandinavian Presence in Eastern Scotland in the Viking Age
- Mari Arentz Østmo and Marianne Moen Connecting Death: interpersonal and other affiliations in burial monuments with multiple individuals from Norway
- Cassidy Croci Building Bridges: visualizing the Role of Women in Sturlubók
- Judith Jesch Afterword
ABOUT THE EDITORS:
Clare Downham is Professor of Medieval History at the University of Liverpool. Her publications include Medieval Ireland (Cambridge University Press 2017) and Medieval Kings of Britain and Ireland: The Dynasty of Ivarr to A.D. 1014 (Liverpool University Press 2007).
Fiona Edmonds is Professor in Regional History, Lancaster University. Her publications include Gaelic Influence in the Northumbrian Kingdom: the Golden Age and the Viking Age (Boydell & Brewer 2019).
Nancy Edwards is Professor Emerita in Medieval Archaeology, Prifysgol Bangor, Bangor University. Her publications include Life in Early Medieval Wales (Oxford University Press 2023).
David Griffiths is Professor of Archaeology, University of Oxford. His publications include Vikings of the Irish Sea (History Press 2010, new edition 2025).